


Sleeping Patterns

by cmk418



Category: Justified
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-05
Updated: 2012-02-05
Packaged: 2017-10-30 17:51:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/334473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cmk418/pseuds/cmk418
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rachel, in states of rest and unrest</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sleeping Patterns

Rachel opens her eyes, letting them adjust to the semi-darkness of the room.

_Something’s not right_ , she thinks.

“Nightmare?” The voice that speaks is familiar, so she answers automatically.

“Just a dream,” she replies, but there’s still an uneasiness that she can’t shake off.

She snuggles back into a strong masculine body, feels his arms wrap around her.

It’s only in the morning when she wakes up as alone as when she went to sleep that she remembers the dream.

She has a hard time meeting Raylan’s eyes the rest of the day.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

“You been sleeping?” Art observes.

“Got my four hours,” she responds calmly. She knows he expects something – some change in her that should have occurred in the days following the shooting of that drug dealer. She’s had trouble sleeping, definitely, but the shooting wasn’t the cause. The shooting was part of the job. It was something that wasn’t encouraged, but if it happened in the course of pursuit – in self-defense or to protect another, it was accepted.

The cause of her sleeping problems was the refrain sounding in her head. Her mother’s voice stating, “She was addicted before she met him, you know that.” It was one of the things that she learned, studying to be a Marshal, how to spot an addict. The way someone looked and moved when they were addicted to meth or Oxy or heroin. It was a whole set of behaviors that were easy to see once you knew what to look for. Trouble was, she hadn’t learned them until she was in her twenties, until Shawnee was well on the way to destroying herself. Could she have saved her? Rachel didn’t know.

Maybe the shooting of that drug dealer helped to buy someone else’s sister a few more minutes.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

“Do I have something on my face?” Tim says as he catches her looking at him for the fifth time that afternoon.

Rachel shakes her head and looks back down at her paperwork for a moment, then steals a glance back at him.

Their eyes meet and then he’s coming over and leaning on the edge of her desk. “I finally make the Marshal’s most wanted list?”

“No.”

“Am I finally on the list of Kentucky’s Most Eligible Bachelors?”

“There’s a…?”

“Did I do something to offend you?”

“Nothing like that. It’s silly really, because it didn’t happen.”

“Did you want it to?”

“God, no.”

He takes a step away from her desk. “Because it looks like you’re considering…”

“I’m not considering that.”

“Okay, then, I’m just gonna take myself back over here. Don’t know why you’ve gotta be so vehement about it.”

She hears the desk chair move as he sits back down. The idea enters her mind suddenly that they may have been talking about two different things. She sighs and confesses, “I had a dream that you were shot. Last night.”

“Oh… Was I killed?”

“I don’t know. I woke up before I could get to you. And you’re here and I can see you but there’s still a little part of me in the back of my head that’s still trying to get to the dream you. Do you understand?”

“Yeah, I understand. Your dream me is a lousy shot. I don’t miss, Rachel.”

She nods and turns back to her paperwork. A moment later she glances up at him again. He grins at her and she smiles back.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

After the anesthetic from the root canal wears off, the pain begins to seep back in. Rachel attempts to live with it for a couple hours until finally deciding that it’s ridiculous not to use the prescription Vicodin the doctor has given her to combat the pain. She doesn’t normally like the effects of the drug – it makes her sleepy and sluggish – but since she has a couple of days away from work, sleepy and sluggish might not be too bad.

She dozes off and on throughout the day. An SVU marathon plays on the television and in between Stabler and Benson going from crime to crime to crime, she dreams. Every aspect of her life presents itself in her dreams – family, friends, co-workers, ex-lovers, classmates and teachers she had in grade school, high school, college. In sleep, she flits from one random connection to another. She can be a child in one, an astronaut in another, about to get married – and has no clue exactly who she’s marrying only that she’s happy.

People from the job show up from time to time in her dreams as well. Not just co-workers, but witnesses, perpetrators, family members of the victims, and random people from her encounters in the field.

When the grizzled man with bad teeth who had been driving Roland Pike’s car makes a cameo as her father, she knows that it’s time to face the pain and return to reality.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Rachel opens her eyes, letting them adjust to the semi-darkness of the room.

“Nightmare?” he asks.

“Just a dream,” she replies.

She snuggles back into a strong masculine body, feels Tim’s arms wrap around her, hears his breathing slow as he returns to sleep.

A few moments later, she does the same.  



End file.
